Gender Movements.

This chapter seeks to emphasize the role of social movements in gender change by examining the diverse, multiple and often contradictory social movement activities organized around gender in the U.S. Specifically, the authors focus on the various and sometimes paradoxical ideologies and organizational structures of the modern women's movement. They then trace the larger macrostructural preconditions that underlie the emergence of feminist movements in most Western societies. After a brief examination of feminist mobilization in an international context, they turn to examine the continuity and transformation of the contemporary feminist movement in the U.S. and the multiple and shifting strategies collective actors have used in the struggle for equality between women and men.